Posted By:
PaulMaybe it's a little off point, but I thought I'd offer my unique perspective on this -- the perspective of one of JP Cohen's (small time) victims.
I live in Orange County, CA where the scam took place. I was young and naive the early 1990s, and making decent money for someone my age. I started receiving phone calls from various "charities" asking for donations. They all had "police", "fire dept.", or "veteran" in their name.
At first, I made a few donations, always $25 a shot, which is what they asked for. After awhile, the calls became so frequent that it was a burden to even answer the phone, let alone write any more checks. So, I stopped the donations cold. One of the tactics used by the solicitors at this point was to remind me how "generous" I had been in the past. They were able to quote back to me exactly how much I had given. Since almost every call had been from a "different" organization, I wondered how the caller could have this information and became immediately concerned. I asked how they could possibly know how much I had given, and my concern only increased. He responded that he was actually a "representative" of a great number of charities. My concern moved to disguist with his answer to my next question. I asked him how much the "representative" agency keeps and how much goes to charity. After giving me a song and dance about how much goes to overhead, etc., he said that a "full 15%" goes to the charity. I nearly gagged.
The calls kept coming for awhile, and just for fun, I always asked how much goes to the charity. The answer was almost invariably 15%. I've always been surprised I got a response, but I assume they were attempting to comply with some disclosure regulation.
Anyhow, shortly thereafter, I learned from my co-workers that this was a scam that had been going on for awhile and that it was fairly common knowledge.
Paul